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Nature pays no attention to politics

There have been a lot of recent headlines about climate and Manitoba, quite apart from winter storms, but little action from different levels of government.

Manitoba finally signed on late to the federal climate strategy, so $60 million of funding did not fly south, though how we will spend it remains a mystery. Premier Brian Pallister continues to mutter and do nothing about a “made-in-Manitoba” climate plan, while the Business Council of Manitoba murmurs against the financial impacts of a carbon tax — hardly a surprise, as its former executive director is now our “minister of pipelines,” Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr.

The city of Winnipeg continues with its last minute, pop-up, flash-mob “consultations” on a climate plan for the region — leaving the skeptical to wonder whether anything they have contributed will make a difference to decisions likely already made.

All the while, temperatures in the Arctic soar, freak storms dump snow on the Vatican and drought ravages east Africa, warning anyone who cares to notice that our petty politics mean less than nothing to Mother Nature.

Get with the program, please! A sea change is needed in how we live together, because — literally — the sea is changing, along with everything else.

Climate change is a real and present danger, everywhere. Pretending that seven-plus billion people can live the way we do without having major negative impacts on planetary ecology is sheer idiocy. Continuing to do nothing is worse — especially if you are a politician responsible for managing the society in which we live.

People who say things are not so bad are shills for the fossil-fuel industry, employed to troll people such as me to make people such as you think there is some doubt about what is going on, or to dispute the urgency of doing something about it.

I would tell you to count the number of bird songs or frog calls in Manitoba this spring and compare them to what you remember, even 20 years ago — but that would mean you had to find some birds and frogs to count. In too many places, even outside the city, silence greets the dawn after a spring rain.